The Wonderful World of Louis Armstrong’s Art

For more of Louis Armstrong's art, visit the image gallery.image courtesy of Abrams; www.abramsbooks.com

image courtesy of Abrams; www.abramsbooks.com

image courtesy of Abrams; www.abramsbooks.com

image courtesy of Abrams; www.abramsbooks.com

One of America’s great ambassadors, the New Orleans–born trumpet player Louis Armstrong never let iconic status devour his populist personality. From 1953 to 1971, while he was touring the globe, he spent hundreds of hours making audio journals on reel-to-reel tape.

As chronicled in Steven Brower’s Satchmo: The Wonderful World and Art of Louis Armstrong (Abrams 2009), he then “adorned the tape boxes with collages culled from newspaper clippings, movie stills, ads, greetings cards, [and] photographs.” The results, like Satchmo’s best jazz, are both instantly gratifying and worthy of deeper analysis.